


What It Cost

by boredealis



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 03:24:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18651901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredealis/pseuds/boredealis
Summary: The Infinity Gauntlet shows you what you are. But, in the moment you wield it, you decide what you want to be.





	What It Cost

**Author's Note:**

> Major Avengers: Endgame spoilers. Please do not read if you don’t want to be spoiled.

God, he didn’t even think about it. Strange held up his shaking hand, _one in fourteen million six hundred and five_ , and Tony was lunging at Thanos and taking the Stones like this was what he was born to do. His gauntlet powered up, and the Stones flew up his veins as shrapnel, straight to his heart.

**Power.** Sparks flew around him as Obadiah aimed again, and fired. Missed. “Time to hit the button, Pepper!”

“You’ll die!” She screamed, and he could hear the tears in her eyes.

“Push it!” He’d yelled. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t need to. This would be the day he died, and he would do it, again and again and again, for her. He wanted to turn, to say _I love you_ again because he hadn’t said it enough, never, but—

**Space.** The weight of the missile was pressed onto his back.

“You know that’s a one-way trip,” Steve told him.

He closed his eyes and pushed, upward and upward. He thought, a little. He really had no choice in the matter. It took a while for the missile to reach the portal. He thought of the galaxy he was flying destruction into, the world he’d be leaving behind, of his future as a corpse, floating through space in a red and golden coffin. A little thought, but he never regretted it, because he knew the way the scales had to tip, the way he would always tip them.

“I know,” he said, because he knew this ending, he knew that he would fall back out of that portal, but a piece of himself would remain there, suffocating, under the feral gleam of the stars—

**Reality.** The corpses of his teammates, strewn before him. The gleam of the blood on the ground. Captain America’s shield, broken in half.

“You could have saved us,” Steve whispered.

“I will this time,” Tony told him.

**Mind.** He was in a bunker, watching his parents die, again. It was just as hard, the second time, watching his Mom bleed and choke for air. The tears burned into his eyes yet again, the anger, as well. For a bare moment, he was a kid again, hearing of his parent’s death over the phone. He was a kid, drinking and taking drugs and fucking anything that moved, because he’d lost so much and he didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.

He wanted to hit Barnes, watch him bleed, kill him, because Barnes had taken them and he hadn’t paid enough. He was a blunt instrument of Hydra, yes, but Hydra was an abstract, entity and Barnes, he could destroy.

A thought broke through the haze. When he died. From this. Would Morgan feel like this?

Would Morgan want to hit someone and make them bleed, someday, because he was gone? Want to kill Steve, who showed up at her door one day and took him away? Kill Strange, who knew this would happen? Hate technology, hate Iron Man, because every suit he’d built had carried him closer to this end?

“Tony,” Steve said.

He turned to Steve, and saw the fear and sickness on his young face.

“She’ll be better than me.” Tony tightened his fist, where the Stones were burying themselves deep into his flesh. “She’ll understand.”

“Understand what?” Steve asked, confusion creasing his features.

They were called the Avengers. But Morgan would grow up knowing that vengeance was worth nothing, that the Avengers would be nothing to this world if avenge was all they did. Knowing the lesson he took so long to grasp. That killing the Mandarin had nothing on sitting near Happy’s hospital bed and holding Pepper, that raining fire on Bucky Barnes had nothing on the kiss his mother gave him before she walked to her death, that watching Thanos die had nothing on seeing Peter Parker alive once again. Where he destroyed, she would know to build.

“How to let go,” he said, and then—

**Time.** He held Peter Parker in his arms, the kid already half dust. He held him, and the tears burned in his eyes. Strange had traded the Time Stone, Strange had done this for him, and how many people would die so that he would live?

“I don’t want to go,” Peter sobbed.

“It’s only for a little while,” Tony told him, because it was true, at least for Peter.

He’d spend five years wishing things went differently, wishing for Strange just to have kept that fucking Stone and let Thanos turn him into a bloody smear. He’d spend five years dreaming of Titan, back on that rock, unable to hold onto Peter hard enough to keep him. He held Morgan when she was born and spent what felt like a thousand years there, praying that she wouldn’t die for him, too.

“Mr. Stark.” It was barely a whisper.

“Take care of her,” Tony said. He closed his eyes and felt Peter fall away.

When he opened his eyes again, bringing his head back from where it had fallen back on his neck, Thanos was there before him, great purple jaw set. Around them, fire rained down. Someone screamed in the distance, a desperate animal cry.

“I am inevitable,” Thanos roared, furious and huge. He thought he knew so much better. He thought them ants, crushed under his feet, annoyances. Unbidden, Tony remembered the words of another so-called God, so long ago.

_There are no men like me_ , Loki had proclaimed.

_There will always be men like you._

“And I...am...Iron Man.” He brought his fingers together, and snapped.

 

**Soul.**

 

Tony opened his eyes to red. He stood in the center of a battlefield, where he and the Avengers had once assembled, so long ago. The buildings and skyscrapers were dull red hulks in the distance, and gleaming red water, or blood, maybe, pooled around his ankles. Far up in the sky, where the portal had once been, a golden sun gleamed, painting the places the light hit with ruby red and blazing orange. 

“Hey, Shellhead,” he heard behind him. He turned, and there she stood. Natasha. Bathed in red light, but smiling, as beautiful as ever.

“Nat.” It had only been a few days without her, but he felt so old. Like it had been lifetimes, forever since he laid eyes on her face. He walked to her, enveloped her in his arms, holding her tight to him. The sister he hadn’t known he had until he lost her.

“Did you win?” She asked.

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation.

“What did it cost?”

He smiled. For a moment, his chest zinged with pain. “Nothing too important.”

Her eyes were wet, and sad, but she did not argue. Out of all people, she knew. Instead of speaking, she took his hand. “What do you say we get out of here, Iron Man?” She nodded off in the distance, her mouth a sly curl. “They’re playing your song.”

In the distance, where the golden light shined, he heard a few rumbling chords. Of course, he chuckled. Metallica.

Natasha looked back, briefly, behind her, though they both knew there was nothing for them there. “I hope they can do something good with it,” she sighed.

_Don’t waste your life, Stark._

“Don’t worry,” he grinned. “They will.”


End file.
